import os file_path = '/home/students/zimmermann/Courses/ws17/fsem/absinth/clustering/' files = [file_path+'/'+f for f in os.listdir(file_path)] results = list() for f in files: with open(f, 'r') as lines: for line in lines.readlines()[1:]: results.append(line.split('\t')) sorted(results, key=lambda x: x[0]) final = open('final.txt', 'w') final.write('subTopicID\tresultID\n') for r in results: final.write('\t'.join(r)) final.close()